LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: David Drury <idavid@smug.adelaide.edu.au>
  To  : Bryan Wetton <bryanw@box.net.au>
  Date: Sat, 5 Feb 2000 14:46:05 +1030 (CST)

Re: Thin clients

Hi,

> If I have a Linux server I presume a 'thin client' able to display X windows
> apps would be
> 
> a Linux box with a 'minimal' system ?

You need X and a WM, thats all. If everthing is server side, you hardly
need anything. Reed the diskless workstation how-to. Almost everything can
be loaded from the server, including the boot image by tftp if you like.

> a Win 9x box with something as a client ?
> Ditto WINNT ?
>
> How would the above be actually implemented?

Various X-Servers. You could do a minimum W9X install in about 50MB (or
maybe less), and install something like Xcursion, Xseed (expensive but
good), or a miriad of freeware and shareware clients.

One recommendation, don't try this over a modem. At 336 it took 5 minutes
for Netscape to start, and about 2 minutes to load a page. XTerms only
took 30 seconds to load, but they are fairly slow.

Interestingly enough, 10 years ago, the diskless workstation existed for
DOS/Win as well. When Hard Drives were expensive, you'd remote boot all
your files from a (Novell) server. Tho all application processing was
client based, so it wasn't a true Thin Client, its interesting how quickly
computing technology is forgotten. 

Alot of the thin client talk I've heard about M$ opperating systems,
involves downloading the App from the internet. It still sounds like alot
of processing is done client side.

cya

-- 
David Drury

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